This comic refers to the film Jurassic Park, a 1993 movie based on the 1990 novel by Michael Crichton. The film depicts a billionaire who buys an island and opens a zoo/theme park for dinosaurs cloned from DNA recovered from blood found in fossilized mosquitoes. Naturally, everything goes haywire, and several of the creatures, among which are the velociraptors subject of this comic, try to devour every human in the theme park.

Velociraptors (often shortened as "raptors") are a species of relatively small, carnivorous dinosaur that play a central role in the original film and its sequels. In the film, packs of Velociraptors antagonize the main characters at various points, even entering buildings; they play a large role in the climax of the film. According to Wikipedia, the velociraptors in the film were erroneously based on Deinonychus. The movie depicts the velociraptors as having scaly reptilian skin, though dinosaurs of this type are now theorized to have been feathered.

As we see in this comic, and will see in future comics, even though it had been approximately thirteen years since he presumably first saw the film, Randall apparently has lived in perpetual fear of a real raptor attack. Specifically, in this comic he worries how a building would stand up against the creatures. The main risk posed by the house depicted comes by the large window in the living room, through which a Velociraptor could break-and-enter (believing that the bathroom window is too high for them to reach, and the door too secure to break through).

The image text points out what he presumes is the reader's disbelief that Jurassic Park had (as of 2006) been released so long ago (thirteen years prior). This is another classic xkcd premise which will later be the subject of a least one comic outright: #891 five years later, which includes Jurassic Park again. It's the first in a long line of comments and comics Randall has made for the sole purpose of making us feel old.

Discussion

I know the knowledge of dinosaurs is growing and changing daily. Was it widely understood that Velociraptors were feathers back in the early 1990s? Tryc (talk) 17:33, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Nope. The confirmation came quite later.
Wikipedia: In 2007, paleontologists reported the discovery of quill knobs on a well-preserved Velociraptor mongoliensis forearm from Mongolia, confirming the presence of feathers in this species.
SaMa (talk) 13:31, 20 June 2013 (UTC)we

However, the size of the velociraptor was well known when the book and the film were produced. The dinosaurs in the film are similar to Utahraptor in size. Utahraptor was also feathered. HNY 141.101.106.107 00:32, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

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